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FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — As David Duval ascended the steep slope to Bethpage Black's 18th green during Monday's final round of the U.S. Open, he may as well have been emerging from the abyss.
Here was a golfer who had missed the cut in 22 of his last 31 starts, had not won a tournament since 2001, and who came into the week ranked 882nd in the world. A golfer so disenchanted by the game that in 2004 he took a seven-month hiatus from competition. A golfer who at the last U.S. Open on Long Island, at Shinnecock Hills, shot 25 over par — before the cut.
Yet here was Duval in his familiar Nike hat and wraparound shades, clambering onto the Black's 18th green to resounding applause. The man has been telling us for months that he's "close," and Monday, after finishing in a tie for second in the game's most exacting championship, he finally proved it. With three dazzling birdies in his final five holes, Duval jumped to two under par, just two strokes behind eventual champion Lucas Glover and in a tie with Ricky Barnes and Phil Mickelson. It was a thrilling and unlikely finish for Duval, with only one dissatisfied customer — Duval himself.
"I stand before you certainly happy with how I played, but extremely disappointed in the outcome," Duval said soon after play concluded. "I had no question in my mind that I was going to win the golf tournament today."
It was a stunning remark from a golfer who since 2002 has all but faded from memory. Duval's problems have been myriad and at times mysterious — family discord, back and wrist problems, self-described feelings of emptiness, even a battle with vertigo. Sure, in the past couple of seasons he has shown flashes of his former self — an opening-round 65 at the 2007 Buick Invitational, a 66 to kick things off at the Valero Texas Open last month, a second-round 69 at last year's British Open that put him into 36-hole contention. But inevitably those scores have been tempered by bigger, uglier numbers. (That 69 at last year's British? He followed it with an 81.)
In the early going today, Duval looked destined for another predictable flameout. His first swing of the day — his tee shot at the 232-yard par-3 third — buried in a greenside bunker. Several whacks later, he had a 6 on his card. At the long par-4 seventh, with his ball in the fairway but caked in mud, he hooked a low screaming approach into the base of a tree some 50 yards short of the green. The ensuing bogey dropped him to one over.
"Duval's hit just two bad shots, and both times it's just nailed him," NBC's Johnny Miller noted during the telecast.
Duval battled back with a birdie two at the eighth, but remained even through 13. Then he heated up, buoyed by the boisterous galleries that had rocked Bethpage all week. At the short par-3 14th, he knocked it stiff and made a two. At the brutal par-4 15th — the Black's toughest hole in both Opens contested here — he dropped a 14-footer for another birdie. And at the par-4 16th, Duval, statistically the week's best putter, drained a 10-footer for his third straight birdie.
He gave one back at the par-3 17th, where he missed the green and couldn't get up and down, but Duval enjoyed every New York minute of his late-round dramatics. "I probably had a lot more fun out there in the heat of it, especially over there in the theater of 15 through 18, than I've had on a golf course in a long, long time," he said.
Indeed, if Mickelson couldn't satiate New Yorkers' hunger for a feel-good story, then Duval was the next best thing. During a championship marred by foreboding clouds, lashing rain and damp, muddy fairways, Duval was like a blast of much-needed sunshine. The usually aloof and sullen golfer followed birdies with smiles and even a few high-fives — even if he wasn't always cheery within.
"It's very difficult to sit here and say second place is a failure," he said. "It is very much a success. [But] it's not quite the success I had looked forward to this week and had hoped for, and in some way expected."
Duval's not just playing like the world's former No. 1 golfer, he's starting to sound like that guy, too.
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